Well fine folks, its official, the United States Space Force was born on December 20th, 2019. Donald Trump delivers on a campaign promise.
They even have their own twitter now and a blue checkmark lol:
United States Space Force
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Wikipedia:
United States Space Force (
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The United States Space Force (USSF) is the service branch of the U.S. Armed Forces focused on and operating in space, and is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services. It is the sixth branch of the U.S. military and the first new branch since the establishment of the independent U.S. Air Force in 1947.
It is organized as a military service branch within the Department of the Air Force, one of the three military departments within the Department of Defense. The Space Force, through the Department of the Air Force, is headed by the Secretary of the Air Force, who reports to the Secretary of Defense, and is appointed by the President with Senate confirmation. The highest-ranking military officer in the Space Force will be the Chief of Space Operations, who will exercise supervision over Space Force units and serve as one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Certain Space Force components will be assigned, as directed by the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Air Force, to unified combatant commands. Combatant commanders will be delegated operational authority of the forces assigned to them, while the Secretary of the Air Force and the Chief of Space Operations will retain administrative authority over their members.
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The Space Force is officially the sixth military branch. Here’s what that means. (
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Air Force officials on Friday told reporters that people are clamoring for information on how to join the military’s latest branch. The short answer is, they’re going to have to wait a while.
President Trump officially signed the Space Force into law Friday, but for now, all that means is everyone at Air Force Space Command will now be assigned to Space Force. Over the next 18 months, officials said, the finer details of manning and training the new branch will be hammered out and set in motion.
“It’s going to be really important that we get this right. A uniform, a patch, a song ― it gets to the culture of a service,” said Air Force Gen. Jay Raymond, the head of Air Force Space Command and U.S. Space Command, who will lead Space Force until a chief of space operations is confirmed by the Senate. “There’s a lot of work going on toward that end. It’s going to take a long time to get to that point, but that’s not something we’re going to roll out on day one.”
For now, the 16,000 active-duty airmen and civilians who work at Air Force Space Command will be assigned to the Space Force, but nothing else will change. Uniforms, a rank structure, training and education are all to be determined, and for the foreseeable future, Space Force will continue to be manned by airmen, wearing, Air Force uniforms, subject to that service’s fitness program, personnel system and so on.
Meanwhile, U.S Space Command, which stood up in August, will continue to exist as a combatant command, similar to Cyber Command, Special Operations Command and others.
“There have been Army and Navy, especially, participants in the planning and the development of the staged roll-out that we have underway,” Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett said.
Barrett will be the Space Force’s service secretary, as the service will be nestled within the Air Force Department, the same way the Marine Corps is part of the Navy Department.
Eventually, she said, those services’ space commands will be rolled into Space Force, and those personnel will transfer branches. In the more immediate future, officials said, soldiers and sailors could be detailed to Space Force.
About 2,000 of the initial personnel are specifically Air Force space professionals, who spend their careers in those billets, will be transferred to the Space Force when it gets its own personnel system up and running. There are several thousand more airmen who support Air Force Space Command, including contracting personnel, engineers, security forces and others. They will move on to other Air Force billets once their tours are over.
There is also a likelihood that Air Force bases that have dealt mainly with space operations could see a re-0brand ― think Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, or Shriever Space Force Base, Colorado.
Officials drew some comparisons to the birth of the Air Force, which came out of the Army Air Corps, and the process it took to grow a new service ― though at the time, the Army Air Corps was a fairly self-contained organization, with a shared history and unique cultural identity to pass on.
“There’s not a really good playbook on, how do you stand up a separate service?” Raymond said. “We haven’t really done this since 1947.”
Officials did not answer definitively when or whether Space Force would be standing up support commands, to include logistics, security forces, medical, legal, financial or other specialties.
“There’s still a lot of things that we don’t know,” Raymond said.
As the saying goes, the Army equips soldiers and the Navy mans equipment. The Space Force will be more like the latter, Barrett said, as technology will be its main mission, and its manning needs will be rather lean. She offered the Global Positioning System as an example of a mission that is vital and far-reaching in scope, but has a relatively small personnel footprint.
“The whole GPS system that the world depends upon so significantly — 40 operators run that system,” she said.
Without sharing details of the plan, a senior Air Force official said on background, because he was not authorized to speak on the record, there will be 30, 60 and 90-day benchmarks to meet. Where it took three years to stand up the Air Force, he said, the Space Force hopes to be off and running in 18 months or less. That includes, he added, sending a four-star officer to represent the service on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
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Space Force is now an official branch of the military — but it still doesn't have its own troops (
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The sixth branch of the U.S. military became reality Friday evening when President Donald Trump signed into law the fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, the yearly bill that sets Pentagon policy. The NDAA directs the Pentagon to create the Space Force, which is the first new branch of service since the Air Force was carved out of the Army Air Corps in 1947.
Top Air Force officials on Friday described the Space Force’s birth as a historic moment that signaled how important space operations are to the nation. It comes at a critical time as China and Russia hone their own space abilities and close a capabilities gap in the domain that the United States has long dominated.
“Let there be no mistake, the United States is the best in the world in space today, and today we’re even better,” said Air Force Gen. Jay Raymond, the commander of U.S. Space Command, who has led Pentagon efforts in space for months and who Trump picked Friday to be the first commander of the Space Force. “The United States Space Force will ensure that we compete, deter and win from a position of strength in securing our way of life and our national security.”
Space Force now exists on paper, but it is staffed almost entirely by troops who, for now, will remain in the Air Force. Many other decisions remain about the service, its makeup and its culture. Congress gave the Defense Department 18 months to build the service. Decisions on uniforms, insignia, marketing strategies, rank structure and even who exactly will become a member of the Space Force all have yet to be made.
Those details are “not something we’re going to be able to roll out on Day 1,” Raymond said. “This is really important for our nation. I can’t foot stomp that enough … It’s critical that we get this right.”
Though the concept of an independent military branch focused on space was initially opposed by many in the Pentagon, the idea was championed by Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. Eventually, top officials, including secretaries of defense and the Air Force, warmed to the idea, especially once it became clear the service would fit within the Air Force Department, in a way much like how the Marine Corps sits inside the Navy Department.
“It’s something incredible. It’s a big moment and we’re all here for it,” Trump said just before signing the NDAA into law at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. “Space — there’s going to be a lot of things happening in space.”
Trump said the United States would soon be “leading by a lot in space,” noting he and Pence found early in their administration a “spirit” and “love” for the idea of a Space Force that would be “important to our defense, to our future, and [that would] blend in so well into our military.”
Space Force’s creation marks the second major organizational change for the Defense Department in 2019 focused on space. In August, the Pentagon created Space Command, the new warfighting command and control headquarters focused on all military operations related to space. Senior Air Force officials said Friday that the Space Force ultimately will be charged with providing trained and equipped operators for Space Command to use to defend U.S. assets in orbit.
But for now, Space Force will consist almost entirely of the roughly 16,000 active-duty and civilian Air Force personnel who have been assigned to Air Force Space Command. That unit was essentially pulled out of the Air Force and rebranded as the Space Force in the NDAA by lawmakers. Senior Air Force officials said Friday that the initial group includes about 3,400 Air Force officers, 6,200 enlisted airmen and some 8,000 civilian personnel.
Many of those active-duty airmen are likely to be transferred into the Space Force in the coming months, however these senior officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivities with building the new force, said the Pentagon is still planning how that process would work.
The officials said sometime within the next few months some 15,000 to 16,000 Air Force space operators -- officers and enlisted troops -- will be given the opportunity to transfer officially into the new service. The officials said Space Force would not include its own support troops – such as cooks, doctors, police, chaplains and logistics specialists – within its ranks, and instead it would really on the Air Force to provide such personnel in an effort to keep the force small and specialized.
Space Force at some point could also absorb some or all of the space operations troops now in the Army and the Navy, said Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett. But she admitted it could be years before such a move is approved.
What was clear is the service will be led by a four-star general -- for now Raymond -- who will be called the chief of space operations. The NDAA ordered the Space Force chief would become a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in about one year, and stated the chief of Space Command – Raymond – could function as the Space Force chief and the leader of the combatant command for one year. The legislation also states the chief of space operations for the first year can be appointed by the president without Senate confirmation. Raymond and other officials did not indicate Friday how long he would hold both posts -- chief of Space Command and chief of space operations
Also clear is the Space Force will be headquartered, like the other military services, at the Pentagon. But Air Force officials said they do expect to rename several of the service’s bases that focus largely on space operations to reflect their movement into Space Force. Those bases include Peterson, Schriever and Buckley Air Force Bases in Colorado, Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, Patrick Air Force Base in Florida, and “some others,” Raymond said.
Congress provided the Pentagon about $40 million to jump start Space Force in its appropriations bill passed this week. Raymond, Barrett and the other officials declined to discuss in detail their funding plans, including whether the department would submit a Space Force budget proposal for fiscal year 2021 separately from the Air Force budget. Those proposals are expected to be made public in February.
Defense Department estimates released in March determined the Pentagon would need about $2 billion for the next five years to build the service.
Raymond and other officials said Friday that they had heard from dozens of individuals interested in joining the Space Force. Air Force officials said an information and recruiting page for the new service would be added to the Air Force’s website Friday night.
“There’s an incredible excitement across our service about the Space Force,” Raymond said. “This is an exciting time to be in our business.”
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Space Force: Trump officially launches new US military service (
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President Donald Trump has officially funded a Pentagon force focused on warfare in space - the US Space Force.
The new military service, the first in more than 70 years, falls under the US Air Force.
At an army base near Washington, Mr Trump described space as "the world's newest war-fighting domain".
"Amid grave threats to our national security, American superiority in space is absolutely vital," he said.
"We're leading, but we're not leading by enough, but very shortly we'll be leading by a lot."
"The Space Force will help us deter aggression and control the ultimate high ground," he added.
The funding allocation was confirmed on Friday when the president signed the $738bn (£567bn) annual US military budget.
The launch of the Space Force will be funded by an initial $40m for its first year.
What will the Space Force actually do?
It is not intended to put troops into orbit, but will protect US assets - such as the hundreds of satellites used for communication and surveillance.
It comes as US military chiefs see China and Russia making advancements in the military final frontier.
Vice-President Mike Pence previously said the two nations had airborne lasers and anti-satellite missiles that the US needed to counter.
"The space environment has fundamentally changed in the last generation," he said. "What was once peaceful and uncontested is now crowded and adversarial."
Space Force will build on the work of the existing US Space Command (SpaceCom), which was created in August to handle the US military's space operations.
Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett said the Space Force would comprise around 16,000 Air Force and civilian personnel.
It will be led by Air Force General Jay Raymond, who currently runs SpaceCom.
Earlier this month, Russia's President Vladimir Putin suggested US expansion in space posed a threat to Russian interests, and required a response from Russia.
"The US military-political leadership openly considers space as a military theatre and plans to conduct operations there," Mr Putin said.
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www.reuters.com
